OILERS SHOULD RETIRE #98 UNIFORM FOR NICHOLS AND EIG

An Oiler fans, Christopher Spencer, has suggested a fitting way to honour Cal Nichols and the 30-odd other members of the E.I.G. who saved NHL hockey in Edmonton in 1998, sparing us the sad fate of Winnipeg and Quebec City.

Spencer writes: “There’s the famous photograph of the original members of the EIG posing on the Oilers bench, backs turned to the camera, all wearing jerseys sporting the number 98. What about retiring 98 (which is not likely to be worn by a player anyway) next fall, complete with the customary ceremony and the traditional raising of the banner? The ownership group did at least as much for hockey in Edmonton as any of the superstars who’ve been so honoured.”

Spencer is right. Save for the contribution made by Wayne Gretzky to the Oilers franchise, I can’t think of anyone who did more than Nichols and his crew. Raising that #98 to the rafters would do justice to their contribution.

“He’s tracking to play at a level of our expectations, i.e., scoring 20 goals, playing on the top line, taking some pressure off of Hemsky and Horcoff because of his size. I think the physical part is coming.”

Tencer asked Lowe to defend the signing, when it’s possible now — and it was certainly a possibility then — that the draft pick the Oilers give back to Anaheim in compensation could be an extremely high one.

“We were in a position where we needed goal scorer,” Lowe said. “We needed someone to play on the top line, and unfortunately they weren’t falling out of the trees. So you have to ask the fans, ‘Would they have been happy for us just to sit back and do nothing and go into the season without another potential 25 goal scorer?’ “

An interesting question, indeed.

I know a lot of fans who would have been happy to pass on that potential 25-goal scorer, including some of the most savvy and vocal members of the Oilogosphere, Allan Mitchell over at Lowetide and Tyler Dellow at MC79.

That said, I think the majority of Oilers fans would have wanted Lowe to sign the Flying Fridge, knowing what they know now about the big guy, that he is a talented player. This is certainly my position.

Lowe went on to say: “We didn’t certainly expect or anticipate this team finishing in the bottom 10 and I don’t think we will. I think we’ll finish above that.”

Again, some would take issue with Lowe here, and tell him he certainly should have considered finishing in the bottom 10 and even the bottom five, that with this team– both too young and inexperienced and too old and banged up at the same time — that was a definite possibility.

Lowe’s job is to manage risk, and with the signing of Penner, he certainly didn’t play it safe. That said, as I’ve said repeatedly, I think the risk was worth it, as Penner is the kind of player who can definitely help win a Stanley Cup over the next five years, while draft picks are extremely risky propositions outside of the top handful of selections.

Lowe concluded his Flying Fridge segment by saying it’s not far to judge the Penner deal on where the Oilers finish in the standings and on the player the Ducks get.

“For people just to sit and cherry pick and compare Penner to whatever pick Anaheim gets is to me a little ridiculous.”

I’m not sure I get Lowe’s point.

If Lowe is asking fans not to judge Dustin Penner himself based on what Anaheim gets, that is fair enough. Penner had nothing to do with what Lowe decided to give up for him, and his play is only partly responsible for wherever the Oilers finish in the standings. So no need to bash Penner if the Ducks get Steve Stamkos. It won’t be his fault. But it will certainly be somebody’s fault.

This was essentially a one-for-one trade for the Oilers, Penner for that first pick. So people are going to compare Penner and that pick, and judge Lowe resulting.

If the pick is first overall, given the delicate structure of the Oilers heading into the season (questions in goal, questions on defence, questions at forward), that disastrous outcome could well have been foreseen by Lowe.

That was the risk, the gamble, the roll of the dice.

Brian Burke was certainly licking his chops, anticipating a high pick.

In the end, Lowe’s run as Oilers GM will be judged by this deal, more than any other deal he has ever made. Again, I supported the Penner signing, so of course I’m hoping for the best, both as an Oilers fan, who wants the best for the team, and as a hockey nerd, who likes to be right about things.

* ITEM: DID YOU SEE ‘MAYERTHORPE’ THE CTV MOVIE?

In my real life, I cover a lot of crime for the newspaper, so I was part of a team at the Journal that won a National Newspaper Award in spot news reporting for our coverage (part 2, part 3, part 4) of the slaying of four RCMP officers at Mayerthorpe by Jimmy Roszko.

At the time, I was working with a Calgary film company on a different project, but they asked me if I would help them do a movie on Mayerthorpe. At first, I though t the topic was way too grim and horrific, but I changed my mind over time.

First off, those officers were there that night on Roskzo’s farm on our business. We asked them to be out there, dealing with one of the biggest and most dangerous creeps this part of the world has ever produced. So there is some responsibility on our part to explore what happened, understand what went on, and see if we can prevent something like that happening again.

A lot of attention — way too much — has been paid to the notion that the four RCMP officers were inexperienced, and that more savvy guys would have been able to stop a guy like Roszko. Having thought this through, I can’t see any merit to this critique, not one iota. I mean, who else are you going to have guard a grow op crime scene in the middle of the night but the youngest guys in the shop? It’s not exactly prime detective work.

The men out there were on guard, I’ve come to learn from various interviews. They knew about the danger Roskzo represented. Of course, he was able to slip into the quonset in the middle of the night, so those young officers didn’t succeed in their mission of guarding the place.

So that is part of the story.

A bigger part, though, is that the shooting underlines the need for gun control and for tougher courts. If four armed and trained officers can’t stop an armed man, no one can. Roskzo was able to kill them because of his weaponry, highlighting the absolute need to keep this kind of weapon out of the hands of criminals. So if criminals do use guns while committing crimes, our courts have got to hand them far more lengthy sentences.

Another factor — Roszko might been in jail and not have had a chance to kill those men if our legal system wasn’t so vulnerable to the evil and illegal machinations of a psychopath like him, such as his constant intimidating of witnesses, which helped him avoid jail time on a number of occasions.

When judges see this kind of intimidation, they must be absolutely firm in punishing the culprits, or our system falls apart, as it did with Roskzo.

In the end, I thought a movie that highlighted these issues was worth making. I acted as a consultant and a fact-checker on the script, and I can’t tell you how pleased I was with the work of screenwriter Andrew Wreggitt, as well as the work of all the various actors. Andrew absolutely nailed Roszko’s nature and the nature of his ongoing battle with the police.

While certain small details were changed — some of them for legal reasons, some for story-telling reasons — the essence of the story was captured.

One thing I really liked was how they portrayed Roszko so angry that the RCMP were on his property. In my mind, this is why he killed those officers that night. He felt that he had escaped off of his property in his Ford truck, and thus any search of his property would be illegal, against his charter rights. It wouldn’t surprise me if Roszko even called up a lawyer and got advice on the matter that very night as the RCMP searched his quonset and found a grow op and chop shop.

I’ve come to learn that Roszko was the kind who knew his Charter rights inside and out, and any violation of them made him crazy. So when the police entered on to his land (in a legal search, I might add, as the bailiff had a right to look for the Ford truck and couldn’t be sure Roskzo had left in the Ford truck they were after, and bailiff also had the right to ask for police protection) Roszko went beserk.

That’s how I see it, and that’s how the movie portrayed it.

I’ve been heartened to hear that many people think this movie was well done. That was certainly my reaction. The people at CTV deserve credit for this work, a dark story well told, a tragic story that is our own, an important story that should not be forgotten.

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